Sorry, forgot subject line, again..

I have a string:

,off,on,off

I want to parse the data into an array. I found and tweaked (bolded) the following code, but the result was:

<blank line> (think this is coming from the first ',')
off
on
off
---------------------------------------
FUNCTION SPLIT (p_in_string VARCHAR2, p_delim VARCHAR2) RETURN t_array
IS

i number :=0;
pos number :=0;
lv_str varchar2(50) := p_in_string;

strings t_array;

BEGIN

-- determine first chuck of string
pos := instr(lv_str,p_delim,1,1);

-- while there are chunks left, loop
WHILE ( pos != 0) LOOP

-- increment counter
i := i + 1;

-- create array element for chuck of string
strings(i) := substr(lv_str,1,pos-1);

-- remove chunk from string
lv_str := substr(lv_str,pos+1,length(lv_str));

-- determine next chunk
pos := instr(lv_str,p_delim,1,1);

-- no last chunk, add to array
IF pos = 0 THEN

strings(i+1) := lv_str;

END IF;

END LOOP;

-- return array
RETURN strings;

END SPLIT;

-----------------------------------------------
getjbb

That sounds quite reasonable because effectively you have an empty element at the start of your string. You could just trim off the leading ',' with something like:

lv_str varchar2(50) := ltrim(p_in_string, ',');